Grade School Curriculum

First Grade

Introduction to writing through story and picture; phonics and sight vocabulary; fairy tales and nature stories; simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

Second Grade

Expanded writing and reading; cursive writing; beginning grammar; fables and saints’ legends; arithmetic with larger numbers; numerical patterns and forms; times tables.

Third Grade

Composition, reading, speech; Old Testament stories; cursive writing; farming and gardening; shelter and building; arithmetic with complicated numbers and practical examples; measurement (time, money, weights), grammar (basic parts of speech, sentence building and structure, punctuation and capitalization), reading and writing music.

Fourth Grade

Composition, letter writing, alliterative poetry; grammar (tenses, more parts of speech); Norse mythology and other northern European sagas; Native American legends; local geography and history; fractions; animals in relation to the human being.

Fifth Grade

Composition and continuing grammar studies; mythology of ancient civilizations (India, Persia, Babylonia, Egypt and Greece); North American geography; botany; review of fractions, the metric system, decimals.

Sixth Grade

Composition; public speaking; Roman and early Medieval history; European geography; geology; physics (optics, heat and acoustics); astronomy; constructive geometry; mathematical word problems; business math and algebra (interest, percentage, discount).

Seventh Grade

Creative writing; Renaissance culture, the Reformation, the age of exploration; South American geography; physics (heat and mechanics); inorganic chemistry; nutrition and physiology; algebra.

Eighth Grade

Practical writing; Shakespeare; history from the Age of Revolution to the present; world geography (Africa, Asia and Australia); physics (electricity and magnetism); organic chemistry, algebra; solid geometry; meteorology and climatology.


In addition to the comprehensive academic curriculum, all children receive training in vocal and instrumental music, two foreign languages, painting and drawing, modeling, woodworking (upper grades), handcrafts (e.g. knitting, crocheting, embroidering, sewing), games and movement education, and eurythmy (a modern art of creative movement).

“We deeply appreciate how welcoming the high school faculty and staff have been. Our son's academic challenges have been supported and we truly feel blessed to have him in the high school.”